Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present tamed flowers by Dutch artist Karel Dicker. For his first presentation with the gallery, the artist invites viewers into an outside world of secret gardens and unfolding landscapes. Karel Dicker unveils the quiet splendor hidden within the everyday, capturing the delicate life that unfolds in the tapestry of daily existence.
His handcrafted Baroque frames—ornate and deliberate—cradle these fleeting moments, elevating the mundane to the majestic. Each frame, a bespoke dedication, imbues his work with a distinct character, as if lovingly revealing: here is something worthy of reverence.
In his paintings, time stands still. These are moments suspended, crystallized, yet brimming with the echoes of human presence. Though no figures appear on the canvas, the objects and scenes Dicker portrays are infused with purpose. They speak volumes, narrating stories and life’s quiet tales.
His art is a masterful exploration and contemplative study of materials and technique, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, eternal, framed in timeless quiet grandeur.
On occasion of this exhibition, Karel Dicker elaborates on his practice:
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I don’t like to begin with a concept.
I begin with the surface — the empty canvas, the space, the unknown.
I follow my last brushstroke, not a plan.
What comes next is never an answer to a question, but a response to what’s already there.
What I paint doesn’t come from ideas. It comes from sensing. From noticing. From allowing the gesture to guide me.
The work doesn’t aim to explain.
It doesn’t try to prove a point.
I don’t walk in circles around themes.
I follow what unfolds. What feels alive.
That’s what I trust.
The work shapes itself in layers, like sediment — sometimes sanded down, sometimes left untouched. It’s never a fixed story. It’s a trace. A presence. A quiet decision to stay with what’s real.
Right now I’m painting secret gardens. Landscapes that are open, but heavy with sky. Faces that carry wildflowers — not arranged, but growing.
All of it moves through my hands and into the frames I carve with the same intention.
The work holds contradictions. Clarity and confusion. Surrender and choice.
I don’t try to resolve them. I move with what comes.
And when I look back, sometimes I understand what it might have meant.
But only afterwards.